The situation has its origins in the import substitution policies developed by UN-CEPAL decades ago, and implemented unanimously in the country by dictators such as Getulio Vargas and the military generals that followed him, as well as elected presidents.

The hopes for change during the mid-1990s, when the Stockholm revision of the Paris Convention, the WTO TRIPS Agreement and a series of new IP laws were implemented, have long vanished. The treaties and statutes approved in the last decades were not overruled or vacated.